


gatherers

by godbewithyouihavedone



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Gem War, Gen, Pre-Gem War, Psychological Trauma, War Crimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-09-02 13:28:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8669500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/godbewithyouihavedone/pseuds/godbewithyouihavedone
Summary: In Rose Quartz’s vision, the pearl can be equal to even a general, and the gems can coexist with the humans, protecting them. But the pearl knows the truth. She is defective, failing her last chance, and the humans are terrifyingly fragile. If only the pearl’s heart would stop aligning with the lie.
The beginning: life and death and love and birth and peace and war on the planet Earth.





	

**i. the chance**

The pearl can’t think of a less humiliating time than when she meets Rose Quartz.

She's stationed at her Diamond’s favorite spire. Assisting with the research, storing papers and files. The pearl has even been entrusted with holding artifacts in her gem. She is grateful for such important work. When Chalcedony arrives, secretly she dares to imagine she’s being allowed back into the White Court.

Chalcedony is accompanied by the famous Rose Quartz. The pearl knows of her: she is the perfect specimen, even rarer due to her healing abilities. She certainly looks the part of a favored general. What magnificent stature, calm black eyes, and long mane of bright curls. Her beautiful white armor, scalloped fabric under a breastplate with a diamond cut-out, reveals the round gem at her navel.

“An honor,” the pearl says. She bows to them.

“Reporting in is all that will be necessary,” Chalcedony says.

Chalcedony brings a report. She skims over praise of the pearl’s efficiency, critiques of her shyness, to talk about the end. Her superiors caught her reading the tome not long ago. It was in her corner, it wasn’t even important, she’d tried to resist but she’d wanted to know. Another backslide. Though her efforts to obey are admirable, it is clearly not work the pearl can be trusted with.

She knows. But, unbraided in front of Rose Quartz, her flaws laid bare, she almost wants to cry.

A choice. Either they discard her, in hopes of reforming a perfect white gem. Or they send her away, in the far reaches of the galaxy, to the new Pink colony, as Chalcedony’s own pearl. One last chance, more than she’s worth. Not her choice, of course. She can only wait.

Chalcedony leaves to debrief the rest of the team, and the pearl is alone with Rose Quartz. She turns away, watching Chalcedony walk down the hallway, her gray robes sweeping down the polished floor.

“What do you want?” Rose Quartz asks.

At first the pearl thinks she’s heard wrong. “My lady?”

“If you were making the choice, would you want to go to Earth or be crushed?”

“I have to focus on staying within my function—”

“Pearl, I won’t tell her,” she says. For the first time, “Pearl” on the lips of a quartz sounds like someone’s actually talking to her, instead of past her.

The pearl thinks. Rose Quartz waits. It’s not an order. Strange, to be talking like one gem to another.

“I want to go to Earth,” she says. “I think I can still be useful. I won’t ask any questions—”

“Earth is different than other colonies. I need gems that are able to act without thinking about their place first.”

“I’ll probably disappoint you,” the pearl says. “Don’t ask for my life just because I told you. It’s not worth it.”

“I know,” she says. She looks sad.

Chalcedony returns. “Pearl, tell the nephrite to prepare the ship,” she says. When she says “Pearl”, she means “let it be done”.

In the hold of the ship, journeying across their star system, the pearl waits. She hadn’t even recognized, before she was asked, that she desired this chance. She will still be useful, even far from her homeworld. She must be.

 

**ii. the earth**

All goes well with the Kindergarten. The pearl is happy to listen to the calculations, watch the tools at work. She often assists Rose Quartz, who did not request a pearl of her own for the mission. Her task force is smaller, given the sparse population of the Pink organizational structure. That is what they are solving, with Earth.

A few orbits into the project, Chalcedony is called away by White Diamond on urgent business. One of her planets is underperforming past what its documentation chronicled. The pearl is temporarily assigned to Rose Quartz. With Chalcedony occupied, they will maintain the existing structures and conduct exploration and research.

Earth is full of alien life. Green still layers that blanket the land and throng at Rose Quartz’s feet. Lumbering soft creatures, with only enough intelligence to be afraid, sustain themselves with it.

“I can control the red bulbs, too,” Rose Quartz says. They’re wandering in a flat field filled with green, some of it maintaining protrusions. The red bulbs have small black imperfections and smell sweet, like the water in the spires used to.

Rose Quartz raises her arm, and the life follows her, growing in a ring around her feet. She reformed on Earth, barefoot and without her breastplate. Now she says she likes to feel the soil squish beneath her toes.

The ropes of matter thronging her sprout green, and then yellow, and then red bulbs. A flock of tiny decomposers, delicate pink with thin wings, surround her. She stands in the milling life, smiling as the creatures alight on her arms, everything pink and white and glistening. Beautiful. Not beautiful as a great structure or a well-formed gem is, the pearl thinks. Not useful, but interesting and different. Like the tome she was not allowed, like the way Rose Quartz talks to her. All the more dangerous for seeming innocent.

 

**iii. the tribe**

They are not the only ones building on Earth.

The creatures live in domed huts. They rarely build with stone and metal. They travel in groups, wearing clothes. Their hide is only one color, brown, though oftentimes the shade varies.

They set off toward the valley where the creatures live. Face to face, they tower over most of the creatures.

“Enemy?” is the first thing the group’s leader asks them, filtered through the pearl's translator. The leader wears the same patterns as the large things Rose Quartz and the pearl have chronicled.

Rose Quartz smiles. “No.”

“Gods?”

The pearl takes the bulb from her ear, fiddles with it. “So sorry, the translator must be acting up again—”

Rose Quartz laughs. “Pearl, they mean like the Diamonds. More than. I’ve seen it before.”

“No, not gods,” the pearl says. She struggles to adapt her language, used to standing silent. “Visitors.”

“People,” the leader says, gesturing toward herself. “Human. You are…bright. Where are you from?”

“The sky,” Rose Quartz says, like small talk at a party, like she’s not jeopardizing the mission. “Where are you from?”

The leader smiles. “The clay. Your hair looks like a sunset.”

“They could be from the tribe across the river,” another says to the leader. “They could be tricks.”

With an angry cry, the leader’s companion hurdles a black-tipped spear at the both of them.

A gigantic pink shield lined with thorns bursts from Rose Quartz’s hands. The pearl watches as the spear bounces off its translucent surface. The humans shrink back.

“If you are menaced by another group, I will protect you,” Rose Quartz says. “I want to learn about humans. I want to know how you come from the clay.”

Her shield fades. The leader walks forward, cautious.

These ill-made things need to use other creatures for protection, and yet Rose Quartz hands them such a promise. Surely they cannot be that vital to the mission. Perhaps it is scientific curiosity. How does one creates life and intelligence from mere loam? But they were obviously not formed for anything important. If they were, the gems would have seen evidence from that ambition all over Earth. A planet wasted, its potential squandered on lesser beings, concerned only with the small area around them.

Rose Quartz crouches down, and begins to talk to the leader. They walk apart from the rest of the group. One of the humans stays beside the leader, spear at rest but still in its hands.

The pearl follows, beside Rose Quartz. Despite knowing the general can take care of herself, she stays by her side, watches for other attacks. All part of the mission, of course.

 

**iv. the renegade**

They talk about the humans. Less at first, more often as they journey across the planet, collecting samples and recording sites of interest. The pearl rarely asks questions. Rose Quartz seems to adore them. Her superior form and mind allow her to take interest in anything.

Chalcedony is here and gone. She has another pearl with her this time. This pearl's gem is formed completely round and smooth, and she has truly mastered the blank beauty of obedience. The pearl burns with jealousy. She is, by now, almost assumed to be given away to Rose Quart. A great leader, and an honor to be in her presence, but another Diamond’s gem and not fond of the servant class. Not even good enough for her last chance, she is left in limbo, with no protector. No true function, either, since the assignment is not official. Well, there is less she can endanger here, without responsibility.

“They should discard the smallest,” the pearl tells Rose Quartz one day. They are on an outcropping, overlooking the dwellings of the closest human group. “They can't support the weight of their heads, with their shoddy construction. They can't walk or contribute or even communicate in the human language. Yet they are waited on. It's inefficient.”

“I did wonder about that,” Rose Quartz says. “Human custom is not like ours in many places. Still, they are members of the tribe.”

“A tribe is a group that has no function. Primitive.”

“They don’t think about their lives the way we do, Pearl.”

Later, she takes the pearl’s hand and leads her into the group of dwellings. Rose Quartz is smiling, and her hand is soft where it does not need to be. Yet the pearl no longer worries about this. “They’ve asked me to be here for a ceremony they call birth—I really didn’t understand the explanation. The humans think I bring good luck!”

The pearl chooses instead to watch from a distance, stand guard, like she often finds herself. Inside a hut, one of the humans sits on a chair, her stomach swollen compared to the others. She looks to be in pain. Rose Quartz sits near her. Then the screaming starts.

The pearl waits. Soon, one of the smallest humans appears, from her, from where her stomach bulged, where it is soft now. Like a living Kindergarten, an environment for creation. The human pants and smiles, and hands Rose Quartz the small one. “A baby,” she says.

“They grow up,” Rose Quartz explains, to the pearl, without using the translator. “That is why they are protected. Like shapeshifting, but slowly and without their control, they become tall, strong humans who can do this.”

“No wonder they’re multiplying,” the pearl says.

Rose Quartz offers the crying small human. “You can hold it.”

The pearl, not knowing what to do, takes it in her arms. “But how do they know? You can see what a gem is, when it is born, but this weakness, to protect it. They could be nothing, after growing. It can’t even defend itself, now…”

“Pearl,” Rose Quartz says. At first the pearl thinks she is angry, but then she realizes the seriousness in her eyes is pity. Then the pearl feels like less than nothing. “Do you want to learn how to fight?”

“There’s no reason—”

“If you want it, I can teach you. This world is dangerous. Just as they will teach this human, it can be done, and you can be—”

“I’m nothing like a human,” the pearl says. Maybe it’s wrong to talk to a superior like this, but she cannot help the crushing feeling in her heart. “You’re nothing like a human.”

Rose Quartz reaches out to her. “You want it very much.”

The pearl shrinks away. The small human in her arms squirms. “You know I’m defective, you don’t have to pander to my flaws.”

The pearl returns the human to the one that created it, and stalks out of the dwelling. She does not realize that Rose Quartz follows until she sees the outline of her white dress, rustled by the wind.

Rose Quartz floats up the hill to land beside her. In her arms she has a human-made spear.

“It’s wrong,” the pearl says. She looks out over the human dwellings. “What I want is wrong.”

“That is never true,” Rose Quartz says. “You are the smartest, most shrewd, most interesting pearl I have ever met. I cannot think of others compared to you, now. I want to see what you can become.”

She offers the spear.

It is fear, not hope, that makes the pearl take it in her hands. She can’t believe that there is beauty in her defect, even the useless kind like the light through Rose Quartz’s hair. If she was worthy, she would not be here. But that, to not know Rose Quartz, is a kind of dread as well.

The pearl learns about the spear and the sword, practices her technique. The temples and spires and reliquaries go up all around Earth. Rose Quartz continues to interact recklessly with the humans. But the pearl is so grateful. She feels like something real, when Rose Quartz looks at her, when she nails a parry. Like more than she has ever been told.

In the rush of day to day and year to year, she doesn’t even notice when she claims Pearl for a name instead of a descriptor.

 

**v. the grave**

Pearl stands, wiping dust and oil from her cheeks. “I think that’s fixed. I mean, it might be wrong. I’m not a peridot—”

“It looks right, and you understand the mechanism better than I can,” Rose says.

They stand in the Prime Kindergarten, currently on hold with the test subjects incubating, since the Sea Spire is nearing completion. Rose received a report of an injector malfunctioning. During the night, they warped to check on it.

After spending hours by Rose’s side looking over the blueprints, talking to the builders and researchers, Pearl recognized the blocked part and adjusted the mechanics until it began to whirr again in her hands. Fixed, thanks to a pearl.

When this mission is over, Pearl thinks, all these opportunities will be gone. She’ll be back on her homeworld, fighting against the exploration Rose offers her. Or she’ll be destroyed, and these are her last moments, indulging in learning all she can before—

Before—

Rose checks the stars, the position of the moon. “Excellent timing, the humans have invited us to another birth, one that ought to start this morning.”

“It will just be like the other twelve,” Pearl says, but she takes Rose’s hand when she steps onto the warp pad.

In the village, the human completing the birth, or “mother”, is already sweating and screaming. How cruel, Pearl thinks, to force their weak bodies to act as incubators, tearing their insides to propagate the race. A rock does not feel pain when a gem is created. Then another rock can be used, and another, and another planet if need be.

Rose stays at the mother’s side, holding her hand. Pearl remembers the mother asking Rose to bless the baby when she discovered she was a vessel. She wonders what powers the humans believe Rose conveys upon their birthing. Of course she understands: Rose is so beautiful, and fearless, and strong, and in her all seems safe. There is a terror that clings to the humans, of creating life within soft flesh. Something past the pain, which they bear happily to hold their young. If only she knew why.

The human arrives, screaming as well, not from pain but from lack of understanding. Rose wipes the baby with a cloth, and turns to show to the mother.

The mother is still gasping and convulsing, as if there is more inside. Once, there had been, two humans, identical like one gem type. That was fascinating. Rose hands the small human to the leader, crouches near the mother.

“What’s happening?” she asks.

“She won’t make it,” a human says.

“Make it where?” Pearl asks.

“I don’t want to die,” the mother says, clutching at Rose. Her voice is as soft as an echo. “I thought if you were there—”

The leader rubs the mother's shoulder. “Your child will live. I am so sorry. You can leave, visitors.”

“I want to stay,” Rose says. Her voice is fine-tempered as steel.

The mother keeps breathing hard. For awhile she struggles, and they bring grass mats to soak the blood that pours from where the baby was. The color leaves her, and she stops moving. Her eyes close, like sleep. Rose presses a kiss to her cheeks, touching her tear-stained eyelashes to her forehead, but she does not heal, does not stir.

The humans leave the tent. Rose walks with them to the main shack, with the leader, who has the baby nestled in her arms. Pearl follows behind.

“Tell me what happened to her,” Rose says. “I don’t understand.”

“She is gone,” the leader says. “Clay again. All of us will be, one day. Life is dangerous, birth is—”

“All of you?” Rose asks.

“We thought your power would help us.”

“That’s why there are so many births,” Pearl says. “It regulates the force.”

Rose nods, tears in her eyes. “Thank you for sharing the birth with me. Pearl, meet me at my fountain,” she says, and then she rises, floating away.

The leader lays a hand on Pearl’s arm, warm and heavy and wrong. “We still need her,” she says. “Please tell her to come back for the next birth. It has never been so easy. She can still keep death away...”

More usually die, before they arrived. The babies, too, or the leader would not have comforted the mother with the child’s life. Humans live with this pain and suffering, dangers that could visit them any time, take them away. That is why they do not destroy the young or the old, the injured or imperfect. They have so little to spare.

“I will tell her,” Pearl says. “I can’t promise what she’ll do.”

Rose sits on the edge of her fountain, still and stern as one of the statues. Like the huge stone sculpture above her, tears run down her cheeks. Pearl has never seen her cry when it wasn’t over a cracked gem. Even that has lessened since they created the fountain. Normally there is too much joy in her. But her heart is bigger than Pearl can grasp.

“Come with me,” Rose says. They warp together, to the edge of a floating cliff, where they have met to discuss plans being drawn for a great library. Rose stands, looks out over it, and then to the stars. Her eyes trace their path, and she stares toward their homeworld, a twinkle in the distance.

Pearl needs to tell her about the human request. But before she can relay her message, Rose begins to talk.

“I’ve seen death before, you know.”

“Like shattering?”

“The colony I oversaw, before I came here—they weren’t as clever as humans. They lived in the deserts, and I visited them. They could create clothing between their fingers, like weaving, and they gave me a cloak, with more colors than we can see. I couldn’t communicate with them, even with a translator. But they had anger and sadness and love, too, I knew it.”

“Our colonies are uninhabited by the time we terraform them—”

“Only if we have to fight the aliens, Pearl. Only if they can fight. I thought the desert-dwellers were quaint. I didn’t understand. I oversaw every phase of the process, and by the end, when I returned to their habitat, I expected them to still be there. But gems are stronger. We are born in what reshapes planets. It doesn’t make us worthy, it makes us careless. I didn’t know they’d all die. And humans don’t regenerate. They can’t leave. If we complete the colony…”

Pearl thinks about the mother, the blood between her legs. An entire world, left like a wounded womb, empty of green, of the animals, of the humans that can laugh like them.

“It’s our right,” Pearl says. “But we’d lose them all.” And they’re what Rose loves. They’re what makes Earth different, and interesting, and new each day. She sinks to her knees, hand over her mouth. “What do we do?”

This is more than fighting or fixing when she is meant to be a servant. The Diamonds want soldiers, and the Earth is more fertile than any planet in its star cluster. To let one life, Pearl’s life, be lived against her purpose, is an indulgence. To act as if they can prevent the creation of thousands of gems is beyond disobedience.

“Pearl,” she says. Pearl remembers the look on her face when she told her not to ask for her life. Rose Quartz, the merciful, all the luck she has had. But this time also Rose, her friend, the one who named her.

“Yes?” she asks. She goes to get up, but sinks to one knee instead. It’s how you address a direct superior. Rose was never officially her master. But it’s also how the humans greet their leader, and she has learned from them, too. Right now, she needs to look to Rose. She needs to listen.

“I’m going to stay and fight for this planet. You don’t have to do this with me.”

“But I want to!” she says. _But you taught me how to listen to myself, to trust my wants, and now all of them are honed to staying here with you._

“I know you do,” Rose says. “Please, please understand. If we lose, we’ll be killed, and if we win, we can never go home.”

And maybe, before today, she could have pretended. Returned to her homeworld with the satisfaction of a job well done, a singular opportunity to shine. To stave off destruction, Pearl would have kept reducing parts of herself. Or she would have gone back into the ground to provide materials for one that can be truly obedient.

Of course she misses her homeworld, and her birthplace, and her Diamond, more than she can say. The freedom she’s had doesn’t erase that. But their one choice means so much. It feels like all the decisions she made before were practice rounds. Ways of building her skills: how to look inside and listen.

Inside, she hears the humans screaming, and Rose returning to her work, reformed again with a breastplate and haunted eyes. Never her Rose, really, even if they meet again. Leaving Pearl a permanent reminder of the limits of her love and compassion.

“Why would I ever want to go home if you’re here?” she asks.

“My Pearl,” Rose says. “You’re wonderful.”

They link fingers. If Pearl clutches too tightly, like the mother looking for anything to right this, like the leader begging for their visitors to stay, Rose says nothing.

 

**vi. the symbol**

The humans need to be safe, and underground is the best way. They find a system of caves to hide the tribe they first befriended. Pearl and Rose guide them across the land. Rose repairs their cracked shoes and creates the plants they use for sustenance.

The protocol for terraforming does not mention relocating native species as a hindrance, but it does not mention interaction at all.

Together, on the journey, they discuss their resources. “There must be other gems that we could draw on for help.” Pearl says.

Rose shakes her head. “I have no right to ask this of them, and they have not seen what we fight for. I should not have allowed you—”

There’s a sound in the trees, beyond the shuffling of the tribe. Pearl summons her spear, keeps it at the ready.

“I believe what you believe,” she says. “I’ve got so much less to lose. But Rose, I’m not the only pearl. There must be so many who want something more than their duties. Homeworld keeps us away from the humans for a reason. I know you told me that I was more before you showed me what was at stake—”

“I never had any plans for you,” Rose says.

Pearl stops walking, and a human squawks and tries to move around her. “What?”

“I thought you would be useful for my unit. But you…fit by my side. There is no strategy. I don’t know how we can save this planet.”

“How much time do we have before the project is completed?”

“Only five hundred years.”

Pearl frowns. “We could delay it, before they suspect. Use periods in which there are no technicians to sabotage progress. With a pearl there, no one would even notice.”

The humans settle in the caves. The gems wait outside the main entrance to the caves during the night, standing guard while the humans sleep. But not all of them slept. Early the next morning, when Pearl goes to check, she sees their work.

They have ground up stones, mixed with herbs to create dye, and created a painting on the wall that faces the sun. In dark red and brown hues, a giant representation of the dress and curling hair of Rose spreads its arms. Around her head are geometric shapes, collapsed hexagons with pointed ends.

“Do you like it?” a human asks.

“I’m not the one in it,” Pearl says. “I think she will. What are those?” she asks, pointing to the symbols.

The human smiles. “Stars. Like in the sky at night. To show that you are visitors.”

Pearl takes Rose by the hand, leads her to the cave.

“It’s best they didn’t draw a diamond shape,” Rose says, touching one of the stars, nearest to the depiction’s feet. “We have seen so much of their lives, and we haven’t shown them our temples and spires, or the Kindergarten. They believe we are good, but we’re hiding.”

Pearl reaches into the shell, coats her fingers in the reddish pink pigment. She draws close to Rose, and softly touches her stomach. Around the diamond cutout, she draws the star-shape.

“That’s not who we are. Not anymore.”

She looks up, meets Rose’s eyes. Rose takes her wrist, presses her hand to her gem, staining it with her fingertips.

Beyond them, the Rose Quartz on the wall of the cave opens her arms wide, welcoming the sunrise.

 

**vii. the rebellion**

Pearl still feels dread deep in her when they return to the Kindergarten. She has hidden her true feelings, her desires, all her existence, but they were never quite so treasonous to the Diamond Authority. She imagines the bismuth showing her fault lines in the rock turning around and declaring her traitor. The peridot noticing her spending too much time with the technology.

But instead, they defer to Rose, the quartz, the general. They think she is eccentric, to match her unique powers. Their trust is poisoned, and Pearl feels sorry for them—she had known who she followed, piece by piece. She wants to give them the chance to explore what they can be, too. But right now, they are her enemies. Even if they barely notice the pearl, pretty and silent by Rose’s side.

Soon, though, the rest leave to track construction on the rest of the sites. They visit the tribe in the cave, choose one, a man, to go to the other humans, lead them to safety.

“Visitors, they’ll kill me,” he says. So Pearl travels with him. Her translator tech proves useful. Without the gigantic, obviously different Rose, the other humans think she is one of their species. The second group they talk to attacks them.

The pearl projects the image of a group of quartzes, with weapons bared, and they retreat, afraid of her power. They will not listen to reason, and keep running away. She cannot save them.

“Why do those like you want to destroy our lands?” the human man asks.

“It’s our version of expansion. We want the minerals deep inside, to make more gems.”

“Nature will fight back, if you anger the gods,” the man says. “You have to stop this, for both of our kinds.”

Pearl doesn’t bother arguing. It must be some small comfort, for the humans, to think their fear and awe of the land would transfer. They aren’t like them, and the things Pearl wants and what wounds her is not human.

But there are times that she admires them, even if she can’t see them as equals, as Rose does. For a gem, protecting a warrior is foolishness. Pearls are optimized for simple tasks and quartzes are optimized for strategy, power, and victory. Yet any of the tribe would risk themselves to defend their leader, even though they choose her for her strength.

She decides to show the human the Kindergarten, to go back to the camp Rose has set up there. It is a risk, but she wants Rose to see that the humans can understand them, too.

“This is evil,” the human man says. “This whole place is evil.”

“We’re stopping it,” Pearl says. She believes that, now. They will save Earth or they will be destroyed. No other futures stretch out before them. Only Rose, Rose at the end and the beginning of her world. Rose, who still worries she is forcing Pearl into her fight.

The next day, the human prepares to journey out again. “I can’t slow you down,” he says. “I will tell who I can find to hide. If they hurt me, I will have saved many more than I am worth.”

_If they hurt you, you will not be able to reform,_ Pearl thinks, but instead she bows to him.

Chalcedony arrives in a small ship, her gray robes trailing behind her in the wind. Her white hair is tied down in braids, and the metal plates on her legs gleam in the sunlight. Her eyes are black, like Rose’s, like any Quartz.

She smiles at the progress of the site, and when she questions them, she is casual. “Where’s the rest of your unit?”

“We’re ahead of schedule,” Rose says. “I sent them to assist with other planetside projects.”

“Excellent,” Chalcedony says. “I hear you’ve been enjoying researching the native life.”

“They are fascinating creatures.”

Chalcedony laughs. “So you keep saying. Anyway, better call your unit back. Pink is pushing the timetable up, and I have a Blue contingent available for assistance if necessary. Other teams have been noticing organic resistance to our building plans. We want the planet hollowed soon.”

“Rushing will only increase the likelihood of half-baked production.”

Chalcedony steps forward, pressing a finger toward Rose’s chest.

“Forgive me, my lady, but your Diamond wants her soldiers as soon as possible, what does it matter what we have to discard? This planet is so resource-heavy—”

“It’s a lot more work to scout out addition sites than to use what we have wisely—”

Chalcedony’s eyes narrow. She steps forward again. Rose hasn’t moved an inch. “You don’t work efficiently and you know it. You’re still keeping my rubbish old pearl out of what, sentiment? We’re here to do our jobs.”

“Earth belongs to Pink Diamond. She’s letting me take care of it. This isn’t homeworld where no one moves a finger without the White Court’s say-so.”

“I’m delivering Pink orders. You’re lying to me,” Chalcedony says. Her mouth is set in a snarl. She reaches to her blue-gray gem and pulls out her weapon, a staff with a blade at the end, a hammer at one side, a curved beak at the other. Rose puts a hand up and her shield materializes.

“You’re the best of us, Rose Quartz,” she says, sweeping the staff back to strike. “But don’t tell me you’ve decided you’re better than the Diamonds!”

Pearl can’t let her hurt Rose—

Hurt her lady—

Pearl reaches into her gem and summons the human spear. Chalcedony brings her staff down, toward Rose’s head. She doesn’t even notice Pearl until she steps in front. Pearl blocks the staff, then parries. Chalcedony’s cry of rage is cut off the second the point of the spear hits her chest.

It’s over before Pearl can even think of what she’s done. Chalcedony’s body bursts into smoke. Her oval gem, cloudy rings of gray and blue, clatters to the ground.

“I shouldn’t have—she’s going to destroy us when she reforms—she’ll know now, you probably meant to talk to her, I’m so stupid—”

“Pearl,” Rose says, voice full of worry and wonder. “You fought a quartz for me.”

“I’ve put us in even more danger!”

“No, look,” Rose says. She reaches out, bubbles Chalcedony. It’s wrong, treating a general like a broken gem, but this way she won’t be able to reform until they have a plan.

Once she’s bubbled, they take her to a cave where they keep supplies, set her to floating. Only then does Rose let her shield down. Pearl sighs, puts her spear back in her gem, fingers trembling.

Not long ago Chalcedony held Pearl’s future in her hands, and now there is no one to hold it at all, nothing but what she can make for herself.

Outside the cave, they sit in the grass. Rain begins, the Earth sending the water its organisms need to live from the sky to the ground. Rose opens her mouth to speak, but Pearl knows that expression.

“Before you can ask, I don’t regret it. I don’t want to leave your side. I’m glad I took her down and I’m glad you’re safe.”

“That’s not what I was going to ask,” Rose says.

She reaches over, puts her hand under her chin, and tilts Pearl’s face up to bring their mouths together in a kiss.

Pearl has a moment to notice the softness of Rose’s lips, the curls tickling her face. To feel the air collapse between them.

Then she scoots back. “No, Rose,” she says. She keeps her answer clear when she feels like sinking into the ground, when her voice shakes to even say the words. Rose is amazing, and beautiful, and she was so close, but this can’t happen.

“Thank you, then, for letting me know your wants,” Rose says, and she takes her hand from Pearl’s neck.

“It’s not—you’re a general, and I’m a pearl. I’ll fight by your side, but that doesn’t mean I’m worth…that. Gems aren’t even supposed to act like this.”

Rose shakes her head. “I’m not ever going to regret that. Just like you don’t regret defending me.”

She trusts Rose, but Rose is reckless, and fickle in her interests, if not in her values. Just because she wants to act like that now doesn’t mean she feels the same way toward Pearl, more than curiosity, more even than loyalty. They have a war to fight, and Pearl is willing to let Rose lose her, but not the other way, and if she is destroyed...

Rose loves the Earth, and the humans, and Pearl, as curiosities worthy of protection. Pearl won’t let herself be something more, for both of their sakes.

 

**viii. the fusion**

Rose knows the gem they are bringing to stop them. On their homeworld, both were brought to turn tricks at a Diamond Authority demonstration. Rose showed her healing, Sapphire her knowledge of the future. Every advantage the two of them have is based on the unpredictability of gems acting outside of their function. They’ve even taken up a name for it, that of the Crystal Gems. Pearl is no longer part of the White hierarchy, nor Rose the new Pink Court. A strategist foreseeing their every desperate move and they’re done for. But it could be the worst kind of trap.

“Is she the only gem they can send right now with future vision?” Pearl asks. She’s wrapping her hands for the double swords she’s been practicing, gem tech adapted to human form. Gems are so focused on brute strength, but humans know that they can outrun and out-think the other organisms.

Rose nods. “I’m sure of it.”

“Then we keep her off Earth until we win,” Pearl says. It feels good to say that—to even think they have a chance.

Blue Diamond arrives with her entire court, because she hoards protection, always traveling with all that follow her. They take out half her quartzes, and a host of rubies. The last one fuses with Sapphire—a cross-gem fusion, unbalanced and strange-eyed—and they have to run before they can take her down.

With Sapphire free, Pearl resigns herself to being hunted down. Instead, they meet the fusion, Garnet, again.

“They wanted to kill Ruby for me being me,” Garnet says. “What home do I have now, when they want me gone, and I want to be there? I’m stronger together, and I can help you fight.”

Days later, after a squad of Yellow soldiers ambushes them, Garnet makes good on her promise. She mows through them with huge metal gloves, as powerful as any designed warrior. Pearl throws herself in front of Rose again, but one of the rubies stabs her from behind.

When she reforms, Rose won’t talk to her. Pearl warps to the floating cliff (their cliff, their place on this world that is not theirs and hopefully never will be). She curls up at the edge, stifling tears.

Ruby sits down next to her. Garnet defuses sometimes, still getting used to this new closeness. Ruby is kind and brave, like no other gem of her kind she has met. To make the choice to defy orders and save Sapphire, giving up her simple life without a thought, with only love to go on—one of a kind.

Pearl doesn’t want to think about it like this, but for a second, in battle, watching Garnet move like a force of nature, she had said to herslef: now Rose has someone stronger, and more interesting.

“She doesn’t need me,” Pearl says. She’s sniffling.

“You’re amazing,” Ruby says. “I was really scared of you, when we met before. Have you tried asking her why she’s so upset?”

But Ruby can’t understand, the hurt deep in her from Rose glaring with every word she tried to say. Pearl was made to take orders, to stay by the side of the powerful. Now the gem she needs the most doesn’t want anything to do with her. Everything she feared, and she can’t go back.

“I should have known I was only the reject Rose settled for,” Pearl says, wiping away the tears that have finally begun to flow.

“Hey, that’s not Rose, and that’s not you. What if…” Ruby takes a deep breath. “What if you tried fusing?”

“We can’t!” Pearl jumps up, images of their kiss flashing through her head. “We’re not—I’m not worth anything like her—”

“Like me and Sapphire?”

“Look, even if she did want to fuse with me, she’d only feel what it was like to be a pearl.”

Ruby shrugs, then offers her hand. She tugs Pearl down to sit, and together in the silence, they link fingers. The lowest, ready to give up the lives their homeworld never saw value in.

They return to camp. Ruby and Sapphire refuse, and Garnet wanders off, giving Rose and Pearl some privacy.

“I’ve been selfish,” Rose says. “I should have just told you how I feel. But I didn’t want to manipulate you, or make you uncomfortable. You said not to talk about it.”

“What?” Pearl asks. “Just tell me to leave, Rose, or tell me how to serve you better! I thought you wanted me to fight.”

“I don’t want you to suffer like that when I can defend myself. This shouldn’t be serving me, because I’m not your lady. I can’t watch you—we don’t have to talk about my feelings—”

Pearl grabs her own hair. “Then what are we doing?”

Rose takes a deep breath. “Wait. Let’s start again. We’re talking past each other.” She unfolds her palm, offers it. When Pearl takes her hand, she grabs the other, until they’re facing each other, close enough to dance. “I respect your skill as a warrior. When you defend me, I'm scared, because I care about you. I didn’t want to be the reason you were stabbed. I was worried, waiting for you to reform.”

Pearl steps forward, into the cradle of her arms. “I can’t stand by when you’re attacked. You’re so good, and the world needs you, I need you to be there. I know you think I’m worthy of the way you care about me. But it’s really hard to believe.”

“Let me show you,” Rose says. She spins Pearl around, until there’s nothing but Rose in her thoughts, until they’re closer than ever before.

The first thing Pearl feels as Rainbow Quartz is pride. Graceful, exuberant, bone-deep pride, assurance in everything she is and will be and can do. She wants to cry, because this must be what it's like to be a quartz, all the time. Then she realizes it’s coming from somewhere deeper than her own heart.

“Yes,” Rainbow Quartz says, in Rose’s voice. Her eyes look to the sky and to the ground. “That’s what you are to me.”

After they defuse, they stay curled together, hand in hand. The two of them talk about all the thoughts they shared. Pearl’s protectiveness and helpless rage, Rose’s pride in all that she has seen Pearl become. Both their fears and excitements for the war they have started. This time, when Rose kisses Pearl, Pearl is ready to meet her, in sync, moving as one.

What Pearl never mentions is the thought she felt, lurking just below the surface. When they looked to the human structures in the distance, there was Rose’s fascination with them, her caring for their kind, her grief at the injustice the gems were visiting upon their world. And the buried spark of self-hatred, the thought pushed away as soon as it formed: that she was not good enough to save the humans. That when Pearl dove in front of her, she couldn’t believe anyone could still want to defend her.

They form Rainbow Quartz to fight, after that, content to be together but not fused most of the time. Every second they are one, Pearl focuses on all she believes in. Rose is worthy. They are worthy together. All that join them, taking up the mantle of the Crystal Gems to protect Earth, are flawless, for their love and bravery if for nothing else. No matter what the Diamonds can do to them.

 

**ix. the crime**

“Biggs, fall back! Bubble what you can find and run!” Pearl shouts off the top of the great library walls.

The jasper raises a gigantic hand, waves of tan and slate gray across her skin, and calls off their troops on the ground. The few archers they have notch their bows but stop firing, waiting for the mess to be cleaned away. Bubbles shimmer into view and then are sent to their headquarters, linked to the temple out by the water, half a continent from them.

Garnet puts a hand on her shoulder. “Rose should be here right now.”

“You’re the one who can see the future,” Pearl says.

“We’re almost done,” Biggs yells up the walls.

“Can you take over here?” Pearl asks Garnet. “If something’s gone wrong, I need to find her.”

“Or she could have just disappeared again.” Pearl slumps down, curling up against the wall. “That does _not_ make me feel better.”

Garnet adjusts her visor. “Alright Crystal Gems, get ready to fire. Count of ten, nine, eight, seven…”

Crazy Lace runs up the battlements. “Alright, ground is clear. We gotta get out of here, they’re taking the walls the minute they collect their gems—Pearl, what’s wrong?”

“Six, five, four, three, two…”

“I’m staying behind. Rose is meeting us at sunset, and if she warps in while they have the library—”

“Okay,” Crazy Lace says. She kneels down, presses her forehead to Pearl’s. The colors in the corkscrews of her hair, white, grey, orange and brown, blur into Pearl’s vision. “Don’t do anything dumber than usual, girl. See you back at the temple.”

Crazy Lace picks up the Crystal Gems flag they’ve been flying and takes it with her. Pearl follows her down the stairs.

Pearl decides to hide, finding an alcove in the main hall where she can still see the warp pad from around the huge columns that dominate the space. They run up to warp in groups of five or ten, escaping as fast as they can. The homeworld gems begin hitting the door of the library, two gigantic stone slabs inscribed with ancient knowledge. Pearl can already see cracks forming.

Finally, all the Crystal Gems are gone. Garnet leaves last, with a curt nod. The doors begin to crumble, a sliver of light falling in. Pearl draws her sword.

Rose appears on the warp pad.

Pearl runs out of the shadows, kneeling before her. “My lady—”

“Pearl?” Rose asks, turning. There’s something strange in her eyes. “Why are you here?”

“You told us we’d meet at sunset—”

“You still have time to warp back—”

“No!” Pearl stands up, her sword in front of her, as if she’s being physically attacked. “They’re still hundreds of gems strong. I’m with you, Rose.”

Another chunk of the door falls out, dust and grime clattering to the colorful tiled floor.

Rose reaches out, hands grasping Pearl’s, from where she's holding the sword. “That’s what I’m afraid of. I love you, remember that. And we need to save Earth.”

“Yes, of course. What’s going on?”

“Follow my lead,” Rose says.

She pulls Pearl behind the alcove, and the door breaks.

The first thing Pearl notices is that the soldiers that burst in aren’t looting. Usually, they pick over any resources they can find, and the library provides many tomes about Earth, as well as an armory upstairs. Instead, though, they walk in single file, circling the main hall, some standing behind the pillars.

“Oh no,” Pearl whispers.

Everything they’ve endured has been against Pink Diamond’s claim on the Earth, and yet Pearl has never seen her before.

Pink Diamond steps elegantly over the crumbled stone, taking up the entire broken doorway, as tall as three quartzes. Her wide-legged pants flow over her long legs, and her arms are bare, adorned with bright silver bangles. Her fringed top barely covers her chest, showing off the gem on her stomach, as bright as anything. Her hair is huge, pointed, and lies around her shoulders like the sun setting behind her. Her eyes are bright, pupils shaped as her gem. There is majesty in her face, in her calm survey of the gems before her.

“My Diamond,” they all murmur.

“What are we doing here?” she asks. Her voice is gentle, but it echoes around the library. She reaches out a hand, pointing to the seventeen-pointed, intricately patterned shining star at the ceiling, both a lamp and a power source for the work that was supposed to be done here. “Look at this beautiful creation, desecrated by our own hand. This door, on which we wrote the truth of a thousand worlds, broken at my feet. Soldier production has stalled, with our defect rate alarmingly high. My fellow Diamonds asked why I would go to this Earth, to risk my court when it is still forming—and so I ask, why am I before you?”

A ruby clears her throat. “Your Perfection—”

“Don’t worry, my brave gems, I would not ask anything of you I was not prepared to answer for.”

Pink Diamond smiles. Her teeth gleam, and her eyes are gentle. Pearl looks to Rose, but her expression is blank, as if her former superior has taken all her kindness.

“We are here not because of incompetence in our ranks, nor defects in the structure of the colony. This library is now a battleground because a dedicated group has decided to stall our projects. As great beings, learners and builders and seekers, we have occasionally encountered resistance to our work. But the organic species on this planet, even the intelligent aliens, are not our enemy.”

Pearl tightens her grip around her sword, knuckles going white.

“It is gems like ourselves, my personal gems, and workers from all the Diamond Authority, who have made the choice to destroy our progress. You have heard their pleas, and resisted their manipulation. If the aliens needed us, they would ask for our help, or fight back.”

They’ve been keeping the humans from the joining the war. Some will journey to the entrance of the temple, and Rose personally turns them away. No one wants to see blood staining their battlefields. But Pearl cannot correct Pink Diamond, even if had ever been her place. If they’re found now, no reinforcements will save them.

“But how can the aliens understand? They can barely speak to us. No, these ‘Crystal Gems’ are only protecting their own selfish delusions. They will tell you that this planet is sacred in one breath, for the life the aliens have built here, and in another, they will ask you to step out of place, to defy our life. What hypocrites, what little understanding!”

Pink Diamond turns. She raises her arm, jewelry sliding together, echoed by a cheer. Her tone is still that of a caretaker, more worried for you than herself in her admonishment, kindness shot through with poison.

“These frauds seek to undermine the Diamond Authority. They want our homeworld for themselves, for the inefficiency they call freedom. I want the best life for each and every gem here. Where is their strength? What have they built? All they do is lie and steal, from us, from the aliens. We can’t let it go on. And so I am here, and I am not leaving. This is my colony, and I will not let you fight in vain.”

The gems around her are cheering now, waving their weapons. Quietly, Rose draws her sword and shield.

“Rose,” Pearl says. Her voice shakes with fear.

“Act as cover. Follow my lead,” Rose says. She’s crying; something in her still pulled to the one she was made for. “And forgive me.”

“Anything,” Pearl says, grasping her hand.

Rose bursts into the middle of the circle, where Pink Diamond is lecturing. Pearl follows her, blade at the ready. One of the enemy quartzes attacks with an axe, and she’s there to block, stab, to disintegrate her, and the next one that comes for Rose’s back.

“It’s not too late, Rose Quartz,” Pink Diamond says. She curls her hand forward, and a huge sickle sword, shining white, appears to fall into her palm. “What you’ve done can never be forgiven. But the gems you’ve misled, the aliens you’ve used—I believe there is still mercy for them, if you can find it in you.”

“I will give them what I promised,” Rose says.

It all moves so fast—Rose jumps and throws her shield. It misses Pink Diamond, curving up, up, up, hitting the huge domed ceiling. Suddenly Pearl remembers Rose insisting they pitch there for the night, to hold down the library. Rose asking to meet her at sunset, long after they could reasonably defend their ground.

Pink Diamond stands in the middle of the pillars that hold the ceiling together. The huge lamp, the power source for the entire library, fizzles when the shield hits it, then cracks in two. She screams as the falling pieces, columns and lamp together, pin her to the floor.

All around Pearl, gems are bursting into light. Darkness is rushing in, the blue energy of the star-lamp oozing over Pink Diamond’s flawless skin as she whimpers.

There’s no one close enough to stop her when Rose floats down, to her chest, and plunges her sword straight into Pink Diamond’s gem.

In all her life, Pearl knows, she will never forget that horrible cracking sound. Like the crunch of bone, like everything was breaking at once—

And when the smoke clears, Rose is holding a bubble, full of pink shards.

The gems around her are yelling, or backing away. No one goes near her. Pearl can’t, even knowing that this is the same Rose she has fought beside for hundreds of years. Not when she’s holding the remains of one of the strongest beings in the universe. Not when she didn’t even hesitate at the final blow.

Rose rolls the bubble between her hands, standing atop a pile of rubble. “Maybe it truly is selfish,” she says. The gentle kindness is hers again, pity in her eyes. “They can’t let any of us live now.”

She lets the bubble go, and it floats up, glitches, to the temple with whatever other soldiers they could capture. Just a lonely floating mess that once was a Diamond.

“The warp pad is broken now,” Rose says. Of course it is, run through with cracks and fissures from the columns collapsing. “Pearl.”

She offers her hand.

Pearl doesn’t want to touch her. She believes in everything Rose has done up until now. Once she’s stopped shaking, she thinks she’ll believe in this too, the necessity if not the act itself. However long it will take. She thought they had forever, to fight, to learn each other. But Pink Diamond thought that as well.

Pearl closes her eyes and takes her hand. Rose jumps, pulling her with. They float, higher and higher, until the debris is a speck in the distance, and they are close to the stars. Pearl opens her eyes, sees the green spread out below.

She clings to Rose, up in the cold, covered in dust and shame and fear. They do not descend for a long while, and when they do, it’s to warp to the temple.

Rose retreats to her room. Biggs and Crazy Lace are at the war table. They look up when she walks in.

“We’ve won the war,” Pearl says.

And in the arms of her friends, the gems that fight by her side, where Rose cannot see, she cries until she can barely move.

 

**x. the song**

The Diamond Authority throws everything it has at them.

Wave after wave of ships, thousands of soldiers, light cannons they're able to steal. But their homeworld can’t risk sending a court anymore, and production has stopped in both Kindergartens. Every battle leads to more bubbling, and they use Rose's powers to heal. When any gem on their side happily takes up arms yet the builders and technicians from homeworld rarely fight, they have the advantage.

But with their own numbers dwindling, the Crystal Gems are reliant on the strength and versatility of fusion. Pearl has been alternating time as Rainbow Quartz, her fusion Sardonyx with Garnet, or Laguna Agate with Crazy Lace.

Crazy Lace is gone now—her gem taken, and Pearl doesn’t want to think of what they’ve done with her. Laguna Agate, dour and four-footed, wielding a bladed double staff, was another casualty of war, an experience she will never have again. She carved Crazy Lace’s name onto a rock on the side of the temple, alongside Bismuth and Trapiche Emerald.

They’ve been through more than Pearl could have imagined when she arrived on Earth, nameless, bitter, broken, and yearning.

Even watching the retreat order for the final battle, it doesn’t feel quite over, for any of them.

Pearl is still in front of Rose, sword drawn, as wild with fear as when she took down Chalcedony all those years ago. But the soldiers are leaving: using the Galaxy Warp, running to their ships, blasting off past the weapons defense system Pearl created that stretches over the field. Even the Diamond control hub that was hovering above the defense system before is turning around.

Rose, Garnet, and Pearl, are waiting at the front lines for terms. They’ve sent most of the Crystal Gems away. There is no need to secure the battlefield, because that is so little compared to what they’ve won. The entire Earth will be their spoils, and their reward will be to give it back to humanity, to ask to share their planet instead of invading.

“We’ve done it,” Rose says, sword and shield still at the ready, but a smile is spreading over her face. “I never thought we’d get them to run—”

Beside them, Garnet begins to tremble.

“What’s wrong?” Pearl asks.

“We need to take cover, now,” Garnet says.

Rose waves her arm, her shield growing to cover all three of them.

Sound stops, all she could hear of the battle: gems running, yelling, spaceships lifting off.

And the light, the brightest blue, yellow, white, overtaking everything—

After the burst, when Pearl’s eyes adjust, all she can see is the gems that aren’t in the ships fall to the ground, faces contorted in pain.

“I’ve never seen this,” Rose whispers. “Even the worst that we’ve done to planets.”

“Because corruption only works on gems,” Garnet says. She’s shaking harder now, until she breaks apart to Ruby and Sapphire.

The gems on the battlefield are changing. Their bodies shift between normal projection and pure light and forms that are—horrible—

Sapphire clings to Ruby, crying. “I should have seen they’d never give us the Earth without…”

Then their forms settle, and it’s a frenzy as monsters begin to tear into each other. “Where are the others?” Rose asks. “What about the humans?”

Sapphire shakes her head. “I don’t know. Please, Ruby, I can’t see any more—”

“Okay, okay,” Ruby says, taking her in her arms, and they fuse again.

“I’ll cover you,” Garnet says. “Go check.”

“Let’s run for the galaxy warp and go near the cave,” Rose says. She takes Pearl’s hand. “I’m going to drop the shield in three, two…”

“Do it,” Pearl says.

They run.

Pearl fends off the beasts that were once enemy soldiers, and they reach the Galaxy Warp.

The cave they led the first tribe they contacted to is now a temple, a human-made one. Throughout the centuries, they’ve visited when it was safe, to meet the descendants of those they knew. To see babies Rose protected during delivery become women and men leading the tribe. The painting of Rose is flaking now, the highlights of her welcoming hands peeling at the fingers, but the humans still keep offerings beneath it.

The war has damaged most gem structures on Earth. But their system of communication lets them clear away human presence before battles. At first, Pearl argued they should keep the humans underground, but she’s realized that their life-spans are too short. They’ve told her herself that they would rather see the sun.

So a city has grown next to the cave. In the great house of the leader of the tribe, onn the stone walls, Rose carved her own worship. Gem writing, the translation she never told the humans. “For humanity, for teaching birth and death, for welcoming the visitor.”

Now a mangled human corpse slumps beneath the inscription, and bloody footprints stain the cave. For the final battle, Rose had sent the gems they could spare to guard major settlements. They’d guessed that the Diamond Authority would lash out, but they never planned for this.

A lumbering, white-furred monster prowls the empty streets. There are caws in the distance, sounding metallic, louder than any bird native to the Earth.

“Every gem?” Pearl asks. “Are we the only ones left? Are all the humans…?”

“No, look,” Rose says, and points to a trail of footprints. “I think some of them escaped. I didn’t ruin…everything…”

Rose is kneeling near the corpse, near her hopeful words, and the beast charges them.

“Wait!” Rose stands, wiping her eyes, and pushes her hand into its fur. For a second, the monster stops, and Pearl has a moment of hope, that Rose can heal this as she has healed so many wounded soldiers. Then the monster rears up, roaring, and claws straight for Rose’s head.

Pearl dispatches it with a single blow, but even her anger feels stale, knowing she’s cutting into someone who was probably her friend. A gem who came to Earth following orders, who had the bravery to begin a new life in service of what was right, who’d stayed behind from the promised victory to protect humans. Now warped and corrupted into a mindless monster that kills anything it finds.

When she bubbles the jasper, it’s a mercy, but it will never feel like one.

She turns, and Rose is already leaving, almost out of the city.

“No,” Pearl says, and runs to catch up to her, to pull her back by her forearm.

Rose shakes off her hand. “I made a promise—I—I need to go.”

“Rose, this is not your fault!” Pearl steps in front of her, grabbing her white skirts. “None of this is! You told me I could be who I am, to learn to fight and build and lead, and I believed you. But we both went to Earth with our duties. The choices you make, those are the ones that matter, not what the Diamonds have done to us. You didn’t want to kill the aliens before, and you did everything to protect the humans—”

“Stop,” Rose says. Her words are choked.

“Hate yourself, but don’t leave without me,” Pearl says. She looks to the ground. “Not again.”

“Pearl,” she says. She takes her hands from where they’re anchored in her dress, and kisses each palm. “Thank you.”

Rose turns back, and walks through the remains of the city. Pearl sighs, and takes up her swords again, since she can still hear the caw of the other monster here. They wander through the streets, the opposite direction of the stampede of footprints marked into the roads. Rose reaches the main house, the inscription, the body. She summons her shield and drives it hard into the wall, marking out the words.

Then she jumps up and floats away, leaving Pearl alone.

Pearl bubbles every monster in the area. The next day, at sunrise, Rose is back, standing before the painting of her. Pearl opens her mouth, but Rose only shakes her head. She offers her hand, and every time Pearl will take it. Rose taught her pride, but all that is broken now, with the blood and the bodies in the desecrated dwellings of the humans they were unable to save.

She knows Rose would never have come back for Garnet, for anyone else she could have protected who is gone now. Pearl has proven her love, with every sacrifice, every reformation. They have each other.

They leave the human city. It is the last human dwelling Pearl will set foot in for three thousand years.

 

**xi. the choice**

Rose keeps learning from the humans. When they’re not scoping out the monsters, she visits the populations that remain, watches their numbers grow again.

Where Pearl is content to focus on the mission they still have left, Rose keeps on loving humanity, acting as a protector and visitor. And Rose seems happy, for the first time in ages.

Rose knows the humans she visits will not live forever, but as long as they stay away from gem locations they are safe. But the hope that they could share the planet, that the humans would let them, is buried now. They never even got a chance to ask.

Pearl and Garnet tend to stay in the temple they used as a base. It's already well-fortified, and far from both human and gem structures, allows them privacy and safety. The fusion the temple represents is no more. Rose quartz and jasper and amethyst, all the gems in production in the Kindergartens, a paean for the purpose of earth, now unrealized.

There is one ray of hope. An amethyst, overcooked and small, left in the Kindergarten. They take her in. Though she’s barely civilized, her programming calling for a great warrior and her production flawed, they take care of her together. She never saw the war, could not hear the song from where she was forming. Four, instead of three. Maybe it is all they could hope for.

The first time Rose takes a human for a lover, Pearl is blindsided.

His name is unpronounceable, his beard is ridiculous. Rose says he’s some kind of seafaring king, which doesn't explain how a pale human unsuited to their climate wound up so far from his natural biome.

Rose tells Pearl about the experiences he shows her, tricks the human body can do to prepare for creation. Pearl thinks it’s ridiculous. Rose discovered all this long ago, her research need not be hands-on. Another attempt at playing alien, when she can’t truly have a child.

Soon, the king realizes this. Soon after he sees Rose and Pearl together, both when they kiss and when they fuse. His anger and lack of understanding drive Rose away.

Rose has other humans after that. Men. Pearl knows that just because humans think of them as female doesn’t mean they are, but she’s still threatened the first time Rose introduces her to a human woman. Rose refrains from any women after. She doesn't stop her involvement with the men, though.

But Rose leaves all the time. She keeps secrets from Garnet and Amethyst. Pearl would rather have her trust, as long as she cannot have all her heart. But Rose is not—accessible, like that, like she used to be. “Some damage can’t be healed,” Pearl tells Amethyst, the first time she helps them take down a gem monster.

She has seen Rose hold a dying woman in her arms, felt her kiss as gentle as new rain, watched her lead an army, and she was there when Rose shattered a Diamond. After the worst day, Rose came back for her. Just like the humans keep fighting against their shortened time, and the Crystal Gems maintain their protection of Earth with all they have left, she will pour herself at Rose’s feet. She will find her when no one else can.

If their love is the last victory Rose can ever have, Pearl will protect it with everything in her.

But that is a story she tells herself, like humans and gems enjoying freedom together, like their homeworld leaving them alone.

It doesn’t feel like a true threat, when Rose falls for the loud musician who abandons his tour to stay in the city near the temple. (There is nothing, nothing the humans will not build next to as they expand, not volcanoes or monsters or the remnants of their invaders.) She plays along, the competition, shows him what he can and can’t have with her. A kindness, really, he ought to know before Rose breaks his heart as she has so many others.

But he talks to her, differently, and Rose looks in his eyes, and she listens in a way she never has with the humans she’s been with.

“Greg and I want to get married,” Rose says. They’re in her weapons room, Pearl fixing up some of the armor.

Pearl shakes her head. “That’s ridiculous, we have no paperwork. No ‘county office’ would accept you.” She wishes he would go away already, find a human woman. Apparently this is worse than she thought.

“Well not that kind of married, then,” Rose says. “I wanted you to be there.”

“Why do you need to marry him? You didn’t marry Laurence and you were with him for nine years—”

“Laurence was married,” Rose says. “I love Greg. And in human custom, nowadays, you’re supposed to get married before.”

Pearl stops her tinkering, stands up. Her heart is sinking. “Before what?”

“We want a child. I can shapeshift, acquire the necessary anatomical details.”

“A human child?”

Pearl is about to start listing off the responsibilities. The years and years Rose would have to remain interested in the child, the inevitability of outliving it—

Then Rose says, “No, half-gem.”

And the world ends.

It feels like the skies are crashing, an asteroid hitting the Earth. It feels like homeworld come back to obliterate them. Like Pearl waking up to her life trying to regain her position in the White Court. Nothing should exist, past those words from her beautiful lips. Maybe they are in Rose’s room, someone’s twisted suggestion spawning a facsimile of the world from the white. A space where you must be incredibly careful what you say or it will turn against you.

If the child is half-gem Rose cannot be there while the child is alive.

“You want to die,” Pearl says. She slumps against the access panel.

Rose shakes her head. “I knew you wouldn’t listen to me. This could be so beautiful, Pearl. A real meeting of the species, someone who could understand both. Just think of it. I could have a child with Greg, all of me and all of him, a gem that grows up with humans!”

“You’re going to leave me, for good, for a chance at redemption you won’t even know?” Pearl’s voice cracks. She can’t even look at Rose. Even without a real identity, she had Rose, protecting her, challenging her.

Pearl knew she wasn’t as important as humanity. But she has tried for thousands of years to tell Rose there’s nothing to atone for. Some things can’t be fixed. Pearl will never really feel like she deserves to be listened to, to lead. Maybe Rose will never live past what she has done. But they fought for a world where they can be imperfect and wrong and damaged, instead of acting like they don’t have flaws because every part of them exists to serve the purposes of the Diamonds. To just give up…

“I’m not asking you to understand why I chose this.”

“It’s not enough that you love him, really love him, the way you used to love me—”

“I really, truly love you, my Pearl, that will never change,” Rose says, kneeling down next to her. Pearl doesn’t want to touch her, but instead she throws herself into her arms. She grabs Rose’s curls, kissing her with her nose running and tears slipping down both their cheeks.

“And the child, they’ll love you,” Rose says, when they break for air. Pearl looks up at the gem she lives for, shaking in fear. “I’ll still need you, and you can teach them, take care of them. I can’t leave Greg to it alone, he doesn’t know what it’s like to be a gem. And our fight against our homeworld isn’t over.”

“So don’t leave,” Pearl says, pressing a kiss to Rose’s forehead, her lips wet with tears. All she can taste is her, and she breathes the smell of her hair. Almost like the first time, when she was afraid that she would be the loss between them.

“Promise me.”

“I won’t go to your wedding,” Pearl says. “I won’t…I won’t be there when the child is born. I can’t, Rose. But I will always protect you, no matter who you are.”

“I know,” Rose says.

It isn’t enough, but it’s where they can be, after everything.

For the next few months, they are rarely apart. Then Rose settles into her marriage. Her belly swells, its own universe, a new form inside it, something no world has ever seen.

One day, they’re lying together. Pearl has her hand in Rose’s, on top of her stomach, and she feels the kick of the child moving.

“I think it’s time for me to go,” Pearl says.

“Greg doesn’t leave his carwash for another two hours,” Rose says, kicking out her feet. “It’s not weird, believe me. Hey, I think Steven likes you.”

She stands up, holding herself. “I should go, Rose.”

Rose nods. When she looks up, her black eyes shining with tears, there is still love and devotion in her gaze, and that hurts worst of all. “Goodbye, my Pearl. I’ll see you soon.”

 

**xii. the son**

She wanders the world. Pearl visits every spire and library and temple they built, now crawling with monsters. She goes to the great structures made by the humans, and tries to see what could be shared between their two kinds. To her, they look like pale imitations.

She doesn’t know who Rose can be, after this. For a long while, she doesn’t want to know.

But human lives are short, and she made a promise. So after a year, Pearl returns.

“Thought you left us,” Amethyst says when Pearl warps into the temple. “Got used to seeing you hide every time we saw you—”

“Is…he…okay?” Pearl asks.

“Steven? I guess, he lives with Greg in that van. Greg’s really boring now.”

Greg won’t want to see her, but Pearl visits anyway. There are bags under his eyes, and he looks at her like she’s a ghost. After everything between them, she’s surprised at his smile. She’d thought he wanted her gone, as she’d once thought of him.

In his arms is a bundle, with dark hair and tan skin. The baby stretches, gem on his navel catching the light.

When Pearl holds him, he’s warm, sweat sticky on his forehead. He makes strange noises, like an animal. She presses him to her chest, though she has no heart to listen for, no warmth to comfort.

What is he to be, this boy who is his mother’s grave?

She can’t see Rose in his face, or his voice, or his smallness. He’s going to grow up, the way humans do, and—gather berries, sail, build wooden structures, lead a tribe, make more humans.

But the fight for the Earth isn’t over, even with their leader gone. Rose asked her to stay, and to teach him. He’ll need to be shown how to bubble corrupt gems, summon his shield, use the warp pads.

He’ll need someone to tell him about who he was. What Rose meant. Right now it sticks in her throat, burning worse than anything her homeworld has done to her, to have him not know. And she’s not sure she’d be able to talk about it even if he could understand. But she has time, to guide this new life, to find her voice without Rose by her side.

She strokes his hair. “Rose, your child will live,” she says into his skin, as he shifts in her arms. All that she can offer to the gem she lives for, now, the duty at the dregs of her love. Her wisdom, final as Garnet’s future vision, choked up with fear. The protection of the Crystal Gems, to use this planet as his own without the threat of those more powerful.

What Pearl could never give him, Rose did not hesitate in supplying, from the bounty of her kindness, and now it is Pearl’s job to defend it.

The only inheritance a human child can have. Growth and knowledge and uncertainty and futility and pain and life and life and life and—

Pearl holds him tighter, and they both begin to cry.


End file.
